


Observations and Interrogations

by enigmaticagentscully



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-08-19 11:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20208724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/pseuds/enigmaticagentscully
Summary: "Are you really with us on this?"The gang is back together, but a lot has changed. One new member in particular is the focus of interest for more than one person, as the Professor's old friends try to understand his new relationship with the woman who was once their adversary.





	1. Mónica

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all my friends in the kabby fam who asked for this and encouraged me :) I hope you like it!

Mónica feels somewhat protective of Inspector Murillo.

She knows she isn’t supposed to think of her as such anymore, but it’s difficult, because everything about Raquel Murillo screams ‘authority’; she doesn’t need a police badge to give off the indefinable air of someone used to being in charge of any given situation. She’s the kind of woman Mónica would have been intimidated by, back in her former life. The kind of confident, capable woman who seemed to have her life together, and would never have let her boss fuck her as a pastime out of some pathetic desire to be wanted.

Mónica is no longer the person she once was, but Raquel is still a little intimidating to her, in a way that Tokyo and Nairobi – gun toting criminals though they technically are – are not. So maybe it’s strange that Mónica also feels protective of her, because she knows full well that a woman like Raquel is not the type to need anyone else to stand up for her.

But _someone_, she feels, has to be on Inspector Murillo’s side, because the others seem almost ridiculously wary of her. They’re not _unwelcoming_, exactly, but there is always a slight formality when they speak to her, a careful distance which they do not give each other, or even Mónica herself, newcomer though she still feels to this little group.

“She’s just like me,” Mónica says to Denver exasperatedly one night. “She’s one of us now; she changed sides because she fell in love, just like I did. Why do you all treat her so differently?”

“Because she’s a_ cop_,” says Denver, as if that is the beginning and end of the explanation. He forgets that for someone like Mónica, for most of her life the police have meant something different to her than to the rest of them – protection, safety, authority. She does not feel the same instinctive distrust.

Denver also forgets that the Professor is as much a stranger to Mónica as the Inspector is. More so, really. He’s an odd man, hard to understand or even take seriously sometimes, with his strange mannerisms and his impenetrable plans, and the kind of earnestness he brings to every conversation. Oh he’ll laugh and joke with the rest of them, but there’s always a sense of reserve about him at all times, as though there is a piece of him he is always holding back.

Mónica can’t imagine that the Professor is like that with Raquel too, but what does she know about their relationship? She and Denver wouldn’t have been an obvious couple either, to most people. But now they are here, together, with their son, and there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.

Mónica isn’t sure what she expected ‘crime camp’, as Denver calls it, to be like, but in her mind she thought it would be more arduous. Maybe a little like army ‘boot camp’. Instead it’s more like a family vacation. There are lessons yes, a lot of planning and training and discussions of possible outcomes to every situation...but there are also dinners together, conversation and reminiscence and jokes. There is a shared purpose binding them together. It is a remarkable thing that they are doing, the sort of thing Mónica never thought she would get to be a part of, and though their fear for Rio is palpable, she can still feel the energy in the air, the anticipation of the feat they intend to pull off. If they succeed, they will go down in history once again. Mónica included. _Stockholm_. She wears her new identity proudly, even if it still feels strange.

But it is the quiet moments, she thinks, that she will remember long after this is all over. The brief moments in between the strategising and the preparation when she can reflect on just how different her life is now to how it once was.

She is playing on the grass with Cincinnati on one such quiet afternoon when she senses eyes on her – a good instinct for a criminal to have, Denver would be proud – and looks up to see Raquel watching them from across the courtyard. At Mónica’s welcoming tilt of her head she smiles and walks over to join them, crouching down by the little plastic train set that Cincinnati is clumsily dragging over the uneven ground, occasionally making delighted crashing sounds as the carriages spill over onto their sides. All of his imaginary journeys with toy trains and cars seem to end in crashes, which Mónica is not sure how to feel about. She hopes it’s normal.

“What are you guys doing?” asks Raquel. “Planning a train robbery?”

“More like a train disaster,” says Mónica.

“Crash!” cries Cincinnati, happily, and then frowns as his over enthusiastic driving causes the front of his train to fall into pieces. “Mama fix,” he says, holding it out to Mónica, and she takes it obligingly and starts to fit the pieces back together, as she has done many times before.

“Do you like trains?” asks Raquel, smiling at Cincinnati. He looks puzzled for a moment and then grins.

“Crash!” he says.

Raquel laughs. “My little girl Paula liked playing trains too when she was your age,” she says to Cincinnati. “Then suddenly one day it was all horses and dolls. Like a switch had flipped. Don’t tell her, but I always liked the trains better.”

Cincinnati beams happily at the attention, cheerfully uncomprehending. “Crash!” he says again.

“Here you go baby,” says Mónica, handing back the now whole again train. “Be careful now.”

Cincinnati grabs it and proceeds to completely ignore her advice, zooming the toy over the grass with delighted ‘choo choo’ sounds. The two women watch with a kind of resigned amusement.

“How old is your daughter now?” Mónica asks Raquel.

If Raquel is surprised by the question, she doesn’t show it. “Nine,” she says.

“And her father is...?”

This time Raquel does look at her sharply. “I suppose you know that I filed a complaint against him for ill treatment,” she says.

“It was in every news article about you after the heist,” says Mónica apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He...wasn’t a good man. He’s back in Spain and Paula and I are better off without him. It’s just strange, half of Europe knowing your personal life.”

“I know the feeling,” says Mónica dryly.

“Ah. Yes, there were articles about you too,” says Raquel.

“The hostage who changed sides to leave with the robbers,” says Mónica. “The secretary who took up a life of crime. Yes, there were articles. The interviews with Arturo were my favourite.”

_The robbers didn’t just steal our money,_ she remembers him saying. _They stole my child_. His child. As though Mónica was just a receptacle, with no mind of her own. As though that was all she had ever been to him.

“He wasn’t a good man either,” she says. “He never..._hurt_ me, not like that, but he wasn’t a good man.”

“He sounded like a complete prick,” says Raquel baldly, and Mónica laughs, more out of surprise than anything.

Raquel smiles at her. “To better men,” she says, toasting an imaginary glass.

“To better men,” says Mónica, raising her own invisible drink and smiling back. “And to a better life.”

Cincinnati, distracted from his playing, yells something incomprehensible and clumsily raises one pudgy hand in the air too, wanting to be a part of the moment. The two women laugh, and Raquel takes the train at the little boy’s urging and starts to zoom it round the grass herself as he cheers her on. Mónica watches indulgently, thinking how strange it is that Raquel should seem every bit as home sitting on the grass playing with a toddler as she does out on the shooting range or running through police interrogation techniques in front of a group of criminals.

“Do you think we can really do this?” blurts out Mónica suddenly, and even she isn’t sure if she’s asking about this whole thing, or just about the two of them. After all, they are the only ones who have never done anything like this before. She wonders if Raquel has the same doubts she does.

Raquel doesn’t answer at first, her head bowed as she wheels round the train and crashes it dramatically into Cincinnati’s foot for his delighted amusement. Mónica wonders for a moment if she hasn’t heard, or perhaps is just pretending that she hasn’t. It is, she supposes, a pretty serious question, the one they have all been avoiding.

But when Raquel finally looks up at Mónica again, she’s smiling faintly.

“I wouldn’t bet against the Professor,” she says.


	2. Denver

Denver doesn’t get it.

Well he _does, _but he doesn’t. It’s not hard to see why the Professor would want to get with the Inspector – the woman is _hot_, even if she would never have been Denver’s type. Too serious; half the time he can’t tell if she’s joking or not, and sometimes it’s not until the Professor smiles and catches her eye that Denver realises she’s made some comment that’s gone over his head.

So maybe she’s got _that_ in common with the Professor at least. A strange sense of humour.

Apart from that it’s just _weird._ Because the Inspector...Lisbon...whatever her name is...is so far out of the Professor’s league it’s almost funny just to see them together. The Professor might be the smartest man Denver has ever met, but he also looks and acts exactly like all the kids who used to get beaten up in the schoolyard – the ones who never learned to shut up and not answer every question in class, and always ended up with their bags thrown over the fence into the road, their glasses broken.

Denver was usually the one doing the beating up. He’d always hated the kids that made him feel like a fucking idiot, maybe because he’d known, deep down, that they were the ones who had a future ahead of them when they were grown up, they’d be the ones raking in the cash as doctors and accountants and whatever while he, Denver, would still be brawling down in the gutter.

Still, he had never guessed those loser kids would be getting laid when they grew up as _well._

And the Professor is definitely getting laid. Regularly. Probably more regularly than Denver right now, because although he wouldn’t trade Cincinnati for anything, there are some things that having a two year old kid can get in the way of doing as much as you’d like to. The Professor, though...he’s still the same as ever in some ways, but he’s definitely lost some of the stick up his ass, and it doesn’t take a genius to see why.

But Denver is happy for him, even if having Lisbon as part of the gang is a bit like meeting the wife of your schoolteacher. It’s funny that he and the Professor both found love in the middle of committing the crime of the century, but who could predict these things? Maybe it’s fate – his dad would have said so. After all, Denver and Mónica found each other in a bank vault after he shot her in the leg, as she sometimes reminds him, so they can’t judge the Professor for making an idiot of himself over a _policewoman_, of all people, now can they? What the hell. When you know it’s real, you know.

Denver wonders what his dad would have thought of all this, sometimes. Often. What dad would have been like with Cincinnati, what dad would have said when he married Mónica, how dad would have felt about their plan to rescue Rio.

Denver knows that he himself hadn’t always been the best son, but he is determined to be the best_ father_ in the world, and for that at least he has the best possible example to follow. Dad always trusted the Professor, so he will too. And the Professor trusts Lisbon. That’s all there is to it, in the end.

It does_ change_ things though, a fact that’s driven home to him when he goes to find the Professor one evening after dinner when they’ve all split up to go over their parts of the plan, bursting into his room without much thought.

“Professor—”

He chokes on his own sentence. They’re entwined in a chair, kissing passionately; Lisbon draped over the Professor’s lap, his hand under her shirt. There are folders strewn across the floor – if they really had been making plans at any point, they have long since abandoned them.

All this Denver sees in the first few seconds before common sense kicks in and he spins around again, wincing.

“Ah, shit! Sorry—”

There’s a flurry of clumsy activity as the two of them jerk apart and scramble to their feet like teenagers caught necking in a movie theatre. Denver decides just leaving again would probably be more embarrassing for everyone so he gives them a minute to get over the minor heart attack he’s probably just given them both by bursting in unannounced and then turns back, trying not to grin too widely. “I didn’t realise you were busy,” he says.

“That’s alright,” says the Professor. The top button of his shirt is undone and his tie is on the ground, Denver notices. “It’s not uh...its...fine. What did you need, Denver?”

Whatever he might say, the Professor looks deeply annoyed. He pushes his glasses up his nose, in that familiar unthinking gesture, and Denver suddenly has to fight the urge to snigger. _Do they fuck with his glasses on?_

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Lisbon trying not to laugh too. She’s adjusted her clothing to something more respectable, but she doesn’t look the least bit embarrassed. It makes him like her a bit more.

“Denver?” The Professor _definitely_ sounds annoyed now.

“Clothes,” says Denver, remembering why he came here. “For Cincinnati. We brought some with us but he gets through them fast.”

“They always do,” says Lisbon sympathetically. She’s combing through her hair absent-mindedly with her fingers as she watches the exchange.

“Other stuff too,” says Denver. “We have a list...” Although he can’t remember anything else on it right now, or at least nothing the Professor would consider important.

“Actually I need some things too,” says Lisbon. “Aside from just the supplies we have here, I mean. We could use a trip into town.”

The Professor seems to consider this for a moment. “Of course,” he says. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. If we take precautions and limit the number going to those whose faces aren’t widely known, it’s not a great risk.”

_That makes a change from last time_, thinks Denver, his mind going back to sneaking away from the villa in the dead of night with Tokyo, Rio and Nairobi_. Guess it’s different when his girlfriend asks for something._

Of course Denver is here right now because Mónica asked him to do something, but still.

“Thanks Professor,” he says, deciding not to push his luck any more than he has. “I’ll tell Mónica. She’s still worried about asking for favours.”

The Professor actually does manage a smile then. “She shouldn’t be,” he says. “Everyone is here by choice. She’s one of us now.”

“Thank you,” says Denver again, and he really means it. He turns to leave but the Professor clears his throat. “Ah, Denver...?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time, I would appreciate it if you would knock first.”

“Or wait until the morning,” suggests Lisbon, reasonably.

“Right.” Denver grins. “I’ll just tell the others that you’re busy planning and shouldn’t be disturbed tonight, yeah?”

The Professor opens his mouth to reply, but Lisbon cuts in, coming to stand next to him and putting her arm casually around his waist. “Yes, please do that,” she says.

“Got it.”

Denver leaves, and manages to make it all the way back to his room before bursting into laughter, much to Mónica’s surprise.


	3. Tokyo

Tokyo was angry, at first. Her anger always flares out quickly and fades just as fast – like a comet blazing through orbit – and honestly most of it was just an excuse not to think about other things anyway. Anger is easy. She can handle being pissed off, it’s the other stuff she doesn’t know how to deal with, how to contain.

But she _was_ genuinely shocked when Inspector Raquel Murillo walked out onto that beach like she owned the place, and when she figured out why...yeah, Tokyo was angry. But not exactly with _her._

_My name is Lisbon._ It was a statement of intent, a challenge. _I’m one of you._ Tokyo can respect that kind of bluntness, in the same way she respects a slap to the face – that was a statement too, she knows. _I don’t need your approval. I can defend myself. I’m one of you. Deal with it._

Tokyo likes Lisbon, actually, in spite of herself; not because she changed sides, but the reason she did it. Love is a good reason for most things, after all. And well, she’d always thought the gang needed more women, didn’t she? But the truth is, no matter what the former Inspector says...she is _not _quite one of them.

_Lisbon_ is not what the Professor calls her, when Tokyo hears them talking softly together, their heads bowed, voices hushed, making plans that aren’t for the ears of others. Nor is _Professor_ the name that his lover cries out in the night, as Tokyo lies awake in the next room staring at the ceiling and thinking of where Rio is now, unable to shut out the sound that travels through the walls.

Tokyo has known the Professor’s true name ever since that night so long ago at the villa, when she confronted him about Berlin. But still he has only ever been _Professor_ to her, to all of them. Their leader, their mastermind, their guardian angel. To Raquel Murillo he is someone entirely different, and so she will never really be one of them. She has not joined their side. She has, in some indefinable way, joined the_ Professor’s_ side.

It bothers Tokyo that it bothers her. She’d never realised before that the Professor _has _a side of his own, separate from theirs. Maybe somehow, even at those times when she had raged at him, she had always wanted to see him as infallible, untouchable, perhaps even a little inhuman. The living embodiment of all his plans. When she’d reached out to him for help saving Rio, she realised she’d never thought – not for a single second – about what the Professor was doing with his own retirement from their life of crime. If she had done, she knew she would have pictured him alone. It would never have occurred to her that he would have anything like a home, or a family. Out of all of them, she would never have predicted that the Professor would come to the table carrying his own baggage.

It’s difficult to resent him for it though, much as she wants to. Because Tokyo is, at heart, a romantic, and the Professor is in love.

It is subtle, understated like most of what the man does, but nonetheless you can see it in his eyes every time he looks at Raquel. It’s the same way Rio always looked at Tokyo, as though he couldn’t quite believe she was real, that she was there with him. The Professor and Raquel are not particularly physically affectionate with each other, at least not around others, but you can see it even in the way they_ talk_ to each other, in the way they are so effortlessly comfortable in each other’s space. Every fleeting smile they share, every brief touch of a hand. Their love is a palpable force between them; _‘I am absolutely sure’_ the Professor had said, on that beach in those first moments of confrontation. _Absolutely sure._ Tokyo has never been absolutely sure of anything in her entire life.

_He was happy,_ she thinks. _They were happy._ _Before I called and fucked it all up for them, for everyone. Just like Denver and Mónica. And Nairobi and Helsinki. Even Rio. I was the only one who couldn’t make it work. I was the one who burnt it all to the ground._

She wakes up with the sounds of Rio’s screams in her mind, as she often does these days.

The monastery is silent as the grave in these cold, pre-dawn hours, and sometimes that alone is enough to make Tokyo want to scream aloud herself. She likes the times when they are all consumed with planning and discussion in what passes for the Professor’s classroom, or drinking raucously around the dinner table late at night, any time when she can shut out the fear and the guilt with the distraction of company. Left to her own thoughts for too long she wants to howl like an animal, break out of her own skin, go racing off into the distance to find where Rio is, or maybe just to run away from it all.

She breathes deeply, her bare feet cold on the flagstones as she walks into the main courtyard, needing to feel fresh air on her face. But even here feels oppressive this early in the morning, surrounded by the high stone walls on every side, the sun and even the wind shut out. The space that seems so welcoming and opening at other times is now just a cold pool of silence.

So Tokyo continues through the monastery instead, out through the door at the back that leads to the gardens behind it; the rows of herbs and vegetables that spread out in neat, orderly rows until eventually they taper off into scrubby grass that leads to the crumbling cliff edge that the monastery sits atop. The view would be breathtaking if she were in the mood for such things.

She is surprised to see she is not the first awake – aside from the monks, of course. The Professor and Raquel are a little way away, on the grass. They are both dressed in loose fitting clothing and performing what looks like some kind of slow motion dance, or perhaps martial art; Tai Chi, probably. Tokyo remembers the Professor mentioning it in passing, back at the villa, but she was never up early enough to see it. Alone, she thinks it might look ridiculous, but with the two of them moving slowly, perfectly in sync, there is something almost graceful about it, calming.

It feels wrong to simply stand there and watch them without their knowledge though, oddly intrusive, so Tokyo strides forwards. She reaches deep inside herself and tugs at the hot, sharp thread of anger that is always there beneath the surface; how can they be so calm, so balanced, when Rio is fighting for his life at every moment? How _dare _they be so content? It’s stupid and irrational and Tokyo doesn’t care. She can still hear Rio’s screams.

The Professor notices her first, and catches Raquel’s attention with a tilt of his head. They both stop what they’re doing and wait as Tokyo approaches them.

“I need to talk to you,” she says to the Professor.

He glances at Raquel and there is a moment of brief, silent communication between the two of them.

“I’ll go and make some breakfast and see if the others are awake,” says Raquel.

Tokyo sees her hand linger for a moment on the Professor’s arm before she leaves. It’s the kind of thoughtless gesture of comfort, of affection, that feels like a knife through the heart every time. Tokyo looks away. She hates the part of her that’s become so bitter, so resentful. She hates how easy happiness seems to be for everyone but herself.

The Professor turns his attention back to Tokyo as Raquel walks away, his brow creased with concern. Under other circumstances it might be funny to see how worried he is at the simple fact that she is up before the sun has risen.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

Tokyo isn’t, but she doesn’t know where to begin. She takes deep breath and then jerks her head at Raquel, disappearing into the monastery in the distance.

“If you had to choose,” she says, “between us or her. What would it be?”

A pause, heavy with significance. “There is no choice,” says the Professor finally, his voice low and earnest. It’s important to him, she thinks, that she believe it. “She _is_ one of us, Tokyo. She won’t betray us, I promise you.”

Tokyo shakes her head. “I’m not saying that,” she says. “I’m asking if you had to choose.”

“Tokyo—”

“If you had to choose,” repeats Tokyo. “You promised you would never lie to me. Rio is being tortured somewhere right now, and it’s my fault and I might never see him again. We might all die trying to save him, and it might be for nothing. If you had to _choose_, Professor.”

Her words are like a lash, and she credits the Professor for not wincing. For a long time there is no sound but that of the wind, and the birds swooping overhead, calling to each other in the pale light. Then:

“I really don’t know,” he says quietly, not looking at her.

Tokyo nods. Suddenly she finds she isn’t angry; it is, at least, an honest answer. “Neither do I,” she says. “Isn’t love a bitch?”

The Professor lets out a sharp breath that is almost a laugh. “Yes,” he says, ruefully.

They watch the sun rise together. There is nothing more to be said.


	4. Nairobi

Nairobi is a little hurt.

It’s mostly on principle, she tells herself, though she’s self aware enough to know that’s maybe not totally true. But still, it’s hard not to take it personally when a man you offered to sleep with turns you down due to some self imposed ‘rule’ and then goes ahead and breaks it anyway by sleeping with someone else. It’s the sort of thing that might make a less self-confident person wonder if maybe the rule was mostly just an excuse, a way of letting her down easy.

Of course in the end half of the gang were fucking _someone_ while they were trapped inside the Mint. Toyko and Rio. Berlin and whatever disgusting thing he had going on with his pet hostage Ariadna. Denver and Mónica – Stockholm now, she reminds herself. Stockholm. Mónica is one of them now, just like...Lisbon.

So it turns out Nairobi was actually in the minority of them who actually weren’t getting laid while they were pulling off the biggest crime in history, a fact which isn’t fantastic for her ego. Her only slight consolation is that it also means that she was really the most professional out of the lot of them all along.

Denver is a sweet idiot who hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing for the most part, and it’s not surprising he had his head turned by a pretty face; it’s only lucky for him he got Mónica, who under any other circumstances would be staggeringly out of his league. Tokyo and Rio are both like rebellious kids; the thrill of the forbidden was half the fun for them, and honestly Nairobi isn’t that surprised it had apparently started to wear off after a couple of years. Berlin was just a prick who would fuck anything if it satisfied his ego.

But the Professor? That _is_ surprising. After all his plans, to betray his first, most important rule...

What does he see in her? It’s not a jealous impulse that drives Nairobi’s interest in this new member of their gang, but genuine curiosity. Nairobi has a meticulous mind, and she doesn’t like a puzzle she can’t solve. What quality does Raquel Murillo have that would make the Professor – the man who prides himself on his control, who always sticks to the plan – risk everything for her?

Well she’s beautiful, obviously, but as low an opinion as Nairobi has of men in general, she doesn’t see the Professor as someone who would be swayed by looks alone, especially not with a billion Euros on the line and a lifetime in jail hanging over his head. He’s smarter than that, surely? Not the type to be led around by his dick.

Besides that, Inspector Murillo is clearly an intelligent, confident, highly capable woman. She achieved a high position in a career dominated by men, which is a feat worthy of respect, and then she abandoned it for a man who beat her at her own game, which is a choice worthy of...something. There is a story there, more complicated than the one Nairobi has been able to piece together. The Professor’s lover is an interesting person, nearly as impenetrable as the Professor himself.

But there is a tried and tested method for getting people to reveal their darkest secrets to you, and it is called tequila. So Nairobi arranges a rare moment when the Professor is busy to get Raquel alone and drinking. Just a few casual drinks, because they all deserve a break, don’t they?

It’s early evening and they are lounging in chairs around the big table where they usually all gather for meals, talking casually about the day’s plans, sipping booze. At first Mónica is with them, her presence a useful buffer of easy and careless conversation, but after about a half hour she goes to check on Cincinnati, leaving the two other women alone. It’s not quite engineered and not quite an accident, but it_ is_ an opportunity. And Nairobi has never been one to pass one of those up. She makes sure Raquel’s glass remains full.

It turns out that Raquel Murillo can hold her tequila better than anticipated, however, and she’s more perceptive than Nairobi had hoped too. Well, she _was_ a cop. Anyway, a few drinks and some slightly forced careless chit-chat in Raquel leans over from her chair, fixes her with a shrewd look and asks:

“What’s this about, anyway?”

“That’s what I was going to ask,” says Nairobi casually, abandoning any pretence that she didn’t have an ulterior motive for getting her alone. “You and the Professor. What’s the deal?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Nairobi feels a flash of annoyance, and wonders if that was the intention. Interrogation was Inspector Murillo’s job after all. She’s used to turning a situation to her advantage, putting her opponent on the back-foot. Playing dumb is as good a strategy as any to make Nairobi have to reveal more than she intended to.

“The two of you are together?” she clarifies impatiently.

“Yes,” says Raquel.

“And when did this happen exactly?”

“It’s a long story,” says Raquel. “And it’s not just mine to tell.”

Nairobi rolls her eyes. “So give me the short version.”

Raquel seems to consider this. “He decided to get close to me to keep track of the investigation and it worked_ very_ well,” she says.

In spite of herself, Nairobi laughs, and Raquel smiles too. There is a slight release of tension in the air, and Nairobi suddenly feels a bit foolish. Maybe she _is_ just being nosy. She doesn’t really have any right to pry into this woman’s private life, and if the Professor has vouched for her...that has to be enough, doesn’t it? It tells her something, though, that Raquel can laugh about it. Whatever happened between her and the Professor while the heist was going on must have been quite a trip. He had not been very forthcoming about everything he’d had to do on the outside while the gang was trapped in the Royal Mint, even on the boat after they had all safely escaped and there could be no reason for further secrecy. Perhaps Raquel was a part of the reason for that – perhaps the Professor felt it was not entirely _his_ story to tell either.

In any case, Nairobi feels it is as good a time as any to ask what she really wants to know, to find out where they stand.

“Are you really with us on this?” she asks, making an effort to sound as non-accusatory as possible. “You have your daughter to think about. The Professor must know a thousand places where you’d be safe – you could sit this out. You didn’t know Rio, will you really risk everything to help him?”

Raquel nods immediately. “I’m with you,” she says. “Whatever happens.”

“_Why?_”

For the first time, Raquel hesitates before answering. “Because what’s happening to your friend is wrong,” she says. “Because I believe I can help, that I can be of use to the plan. And—” She looks away, staring out at some point across the courtyard, clearly not really seeing it. “Because if it were him...” she says finally, her voice quiet, “there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”

There is a long silence. “He doesn’t deserve you,” says Nairobi.

Raquel shrugs and take another swing of her drink. “I don’t think love is about what you deserve,” she says. “I know I’ve been happier this last year than I ever have been in my whole life. Living in paradise with the man I love, the criminal I betrayed everything I knew for. Do I really deserve that?” She gives Nairobi a sideways look. “I know some of your comrades would say that I don’t.”

“They’ll get over it,” says Nairobi. She hasn’t got much time for the hang-ups of others. “For whatever its worth, I’m glad you’re with the Professor,” she says. “I didn’t like to think of him alone, all this time. He’s a good man.”

Raquel smiles. “He is,” she says.

“So...exactly_ how _good is he?” Nairobi raises her eyebrows, so there can be no mistake what it is she’s asking. She wants to lighten the mood and she might as well find out what she missed, now she has the chance. She half expects a brush off, stuttering embarrassment, but Raquel is not the Professor, after all. In fact she doesn’t even show surprise at the question, just leans back in her chair, obviously relieved the difficult part of the conversation is over, and flashes Nairobi a huge, shit-eating grin.

“He’s _good_,” she says.

Nairobi grins back. “I knew it. You lucky bitch,” she says easily, settling back in her own chair. She feels like she’s crossed a hurdle of some kind, and can relax. “He didn’t really give you ten orgasms in a row, did he?”

Raquel laughs. “That might have been a slight exaggeration,” she admits.

“How much of an exaggeration?”

“Not _that_ much.”

“Damn.” Nairobi blows out her cheeks, impressed in spite of herself. She takes a swig of her own drink and then almost chokes on it when the Professor strolls round the corner and approaches them.

“Ah, there you are,” he says. He must have seen something on their faces because when he stops he looks from one to another, slightly suspiciously.

“Everything alright?” he asks.

“Fucking _incredible_, by the sound of it,” says Nairobi, and hears Raquel stifle a laugh. The look of concern in the Professor’s eyes becomes one of mild panic at this unexpected collusion, but he clearly decides he’d rather not know. He clears his throat awkwardly.

“R—Lisbon,” he says. “Can I have a word?”

“I’m guessing you can have more than that,” mutters Nairobi under her breath, earning her an exasperated look from the Professor and an eye roll from Raquel. “Maybe ten words in a row.”

Raquel gets up from her chair, throwing Nairobi a glare, undercut by the fact that she is still smiling. “Of course,” she says to the Professor. “See you later, Nairobi.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nairobi waves them off. “Have fun, kids.” A thought occurs to her as they walk off, fuelled in part by the tequila. “Just don’t_ talk_ too loudly!” she calls after them. “Sound echoes in this place, you know!”

Raquel throws one last look of amusement over her shoulder, and then to Nairobi’s delight, puts her arm around the Professor’s waist as they walk away. Perhaps the booze did have a little more effect on the former Inspector than she’d thought. Nairobi chuckles as the Professor misses a step, glances down at Raquel with surprise, and then continues with as much decorum as he can still muster as his girlfriend leans her head affectionately against his shoulder.

When it comes down to it, Nairobi thinks, they’re actually a pretty cute couple.


	5. Palermo

Martín doesn’t know what to think.

He has known Sergio Marquina for a great many years, almost as long as he knew Andrés. To have the man show up out of the blue and ask for help with pulling off the heist his brother planned all those years ago in little more than a month...is somehow not any great surprise. However, to discover that Sergio – the_ Professor_, as he styles himself now – has as a part of his new team a woman who he has been living with for the past year, and seems very much in love with, is no less than _astonishing._

The fact that this woman also happens to be the former police inspector who was in charge of hunting him down is actually less surprising than the fact that she exists at _all._

Martín has never seen Sergio with a woman – or a man for that matter – and had honestly assumed that he just wasn’t interested in such things. Sergio had always been ice to his older brother’s fire, careful and analytical by nature, hardly the type to get swept up in passion. If someone had held a gun to Martín’s head and asked him to imagine a romantic partner for Sergio Marquina, he probably would have conjured up something like a female version of Sergio himself; someone staid and serious, and given to rambling explanations. The fastidious librarian type, complete with glasses.

Lisbon is about as far from that mental image as is possible to get – she’s steely-eyed and quietly confident, but warm too, in a way that she never allows to diminish her air of authority. There’s a power to her, simmering just below the surface, not denied but consciously restrained; she is a woman who always seems to be in complete command of herself. Impossible to intimidate, difficult to lie to. Not one to suffer fools gladly. She is the kind of woman who Andrés would have greatly admired, for her beauty as much as anything, because beautiful she certainly is.

Martín studies her in the same way an entomologist might study a particularly rare and fascinating new species of beetle. He has no particular interest in her as a person in her own right, but since she is now Sergio’s partner he can’t help but be curious.

She doesn’t like him, he can tell, though she hides it with a degree of professionalism that suggests this is far from the first time she has had to work with a man she can’t stand. She is the sort of woman who would have despised Andrés too; women always either adored or despised Andrés, there was very little in between. It doesn’t matter particularly to Martín what Lisbon thinks of him anyway, as she is clearly competent at her job and seems to get on with the group as a whole tolerably well, but he is fascinated to see that she appears to genuinely adore Sergio.

She listens with rapt attention when he speaks, her eyes soft and affectionate. She smiles when he makes some reference or quiet aside that goes over the heads of the others. She pulls him into secluded corners when she thinks no-one else is around to see and kisses him like a horny teenager sneaking around with her first boyfriend.

Martín finds the whole thing disconcerting. Andrés would have loved every second of it, he is sure, never one to pass up a chance to tease his little brother about his personal life, or – up until this point – lack thereof.

_You wait until he falls in love_, Andrés had said, on more than one occasion. _Just you wait until he’s married. He’ll get off that high horse of his then, and have to eat every single word._

Sergio and Lisbon are not, as far as Martín knows, married, though they may as well be. They have that settled air about them, the thing that Andrés never managed to work out, in spite of his many attempts at marriage. He was always looking for the excitement, the thrill of the chase. Andrés de Fonollosa had believed in the_ concept _of love with the passionate fervour of a religious devotee, but as with many such disciples of lofty ideals, he had found the day to day reality of it boring.

For his part, Martín is mildly contemptuous of the whole thing. At best it’s a distraction, at worst a dangerous one. And there had been a time, not so long ago, when Sergio would have seen that too.

On their last day at the monastery Martín wakes early to see the sun rise over the mountains, and then heads across the courtyard to the vast stone kitchen to eat his breakfast. None of his new associates seem to be early morning people by nature – save for perhaps the Professor himself – and besides, they were all up late last night, drinking and psyching each other up with the usual bravado that people display before this kind of big job. He revels in the solitude of the morning; the calm before the storm.

He selects a pastry to enjoy with his morning coffee, and sits down at the large wooden table with a newspaper (three days old and in Italian, but what could you do) to read idly as he eats. Usually he is strictly a fruits and cereals for breakfast kind of person – a person’s body is their temple, after all – but today is an exceptional day. In the small hours of tomorrow morning they will leave for Spain. If this is the last breakfast he has as a free man, he may as well relax his rules and enjoy it.

He has barely been sitting there for five minutes when Lisbon walks in, hesitating briefly when she sees him, in the awkward manner of one who clearly also assumed she would be the only person awake. Martín is more amused than annoyed at the intrusion. He realises that in spite of the weeks they’ve lived here at the monastery, this is the first time they’ve ever been alone together, without either a whole group of people around or at least the Professor in tow. Lisbon has presumably left him in the midst of last minute planning. She doesn’t look like she’s had much sleep, and for once not for any fun reason. He suspects they fuck most mornings, given Sergio’s usual talkative good humour over breakfast, and the way Lisbon practically glows whenever she looks at him, not to mention the eagerness with which they both shovel down their food. But today their fearless leader is no-where in sight, and Lisbon looks slightly wan, with dark shadows under her eyes.

She registers his presence with a curt nod of her head, and then heads straight over to the stove to start boiling water for coffee. Martín continues to eat his pastry, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“Just one day until we leave,” he says aloud, in an offhand fashion. “Nervous?”

“It would be stupid not to be, don’t you think?” says Lisbon. Her brusque tone suggests she is not much in the mood for conversation, which he gleefully takes as encouragement.

“You always are, your first time,” he smirks, and doesn’t miss the brief slight tensing of her shoulders that is the full body equivalent of an eye roll. “But I’m sure _the Professor_ will tell you if you don’t make the grade.”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Lisbon, continuing her preparations without turning around. “It’s never happened yet.”

“Of course you’ll have him to hold your hand through the whole thing,” says Martín. “And afterwards, no matter what happens, you’ll be going back to your little island paradise together.” He puts just enough mockery into the last words to be aggravating rather than openly rude. He’s not sure why he’s needling her, other than to provoke some kind of reaction.

She pours coffee into a mug with a generous dash of milk, and finally turns to look at him.

“Of course,” she says, coolly. “And where will _you_ go after this is all over, I wonder?”

Martín grins. “Jail perhaps, if it goes badly,” he says. “Otherwise...” He spreads his hands in an expansive gesture. “The usual. Beautiful people, beautiful art, beautiful places. Perhaps I’ll buy an island of my own.”

Every word is a lie, of course. He doesn’t think about ‘after’. As far as he’s concerned, such a term is meaningless. He knows the stakes better than anyone. He knows how, in all likelihood, this will end. ‘After’ is a fantasy that would be childish to entertain.

He sees Lisbon watching him with a strange look in her eye, and he is suddenly uncomfortably aware that she may realise this. It is an unpleasant realisation to have; that all the while you are studying someone else, you are not going unobserved by them either. She holds his gaze for just a moment too long, and then nods. Martín finds himself strangely relieved that she isn’t interested in questioning him further, and then annoyed at himself for the feeling.

“You don’t like me, do you?” he asks, suddenly struck by the somewhat childish urge to make her embarrassed, or uncomfortable, or just to throw her off. But the blow doesn’t land. Lisbon simply shrugs.

“I don’t know you,” she replies calmly.

“And you automatically dislike people you don’t know?”

“I do what everyone does – I form a first impression and then change my opinion based on new evidence, as and when it presents itself. If it does.”

Martín grins. It is the most polite and clinical ‘fuck you’ he’s heard in a long time. He has no answer for it that wouldn’t be picking a fight, which he has no particular interest in doing in this moment. Nothing would be served by it. But at least he’s sure of where he stands with this woman now, and he is beginning to catch some glimmer of what Sergio might see in her too.

She must have seen right through the poor bastard. He wouldn’t have stood a fucking chance.

“Well, don’t let me keep you then,” Martín says, although acting as though he has the power to dismiss her is probably a petty way to score a point off her. Of course, to then insist on staying when she obviously doesn’t care for his company would be equally petty, so Lisbon doesn’t rise to the bait, just gives him a cold look and heads towards the door, coffee in hand.

Then, unexpectedly, she stops in the doorway and turns back to look at him, a slight crease between her eyes, contemplation rather than annoyance, he thinks.

“You have no personal stake in this,” she says. “So tell me; do you believe this plan is going to work?”

Martín pauses for a beat and then surprises himself with the truth:

“No,” he says.

Lisbon doesn’t look surprised, or angry, she just raises her eyebrows at him, obviously expecting an explanation.

“It was never the Professor’s plan,” Martín says baldly. “And he is not his brother. He won’t take the risks necessary to _make _it work.”

Lisbon regards him thoughtfully. Then, to his surprise, she smiles.

“Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you think,” she says.


End file.
